Monday, November 29, 2010

Having a baby at this time of year is fun, mostly because he can have his "First Santa Visit":

"First Christmas Tree Finding Experience":

And "First Christmas Tree":

Upcoming firsts this month will also include: First St. Nick's Day, First 12 Days of Christmas, First Christmas, and, assuming all goes as planned, First Road Trip, First Visit to Grandma and Grandpa's house, and First Solid Food, among other things.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

I'm thankful for many things, of course the big ones like my family and the Gospel, but also for things like being able to live in our house and afford surprise expenses that come up like a new roof, car repairs, windows, etc.

(We had ice on the inside of our bedroom windows last night. ICE! INSIDE! Like the kind of ice that gets on car windshields and you have to use the scrape-y thing to get it off!)

I'm grateful to have a husband who is very well liked and proactive in his employment. I'm grateful he has employment and wouldn't be sitting on his bum for one second if, for some reason, he ever didn't have employment. He's too ancy for that.

I'm grateful for a cute boy who is currently asleep in his crib... even though we are now just waiting on him to wake up so I can feed him and then we can go feed ourselves...

I'm grateful my husband is possibly more excited than I am that we are going to Cracker Barrel for Thanksgiving dinner.

(addendum: Cracker Barrel dinner photos):

I'm grateful for Thanksgiving presents-- I gave Jamund some pajamas (he has been wearing jeans/shorts/etc. to bed since ripping his other jammies. Seriously, jeans!? How cold is our room?! Oh wait, ice on the INSIDE of the window. Cold.) Jamund got me a new iphone4. Hooray! We got baby a warm hat. He doesn't really know it yet.

Monday, November 22, 2010

So far today has consisted of me having a stuffy/runny nose, cold-related misery, raspberries (Simon has lately showed his love of raspberries and kept "making" raspberries while he was supposed to be asleep in the early morning hours), and Simon peeing through his jammies and all over the cloth "high chair" that attaches to the table and which, it turns out, is very difficult to take apart to wash.

Maybe if I wasn't feeling like curling up in bed and sleeping all day due to this cold, Simon's antics would be more manageable. As it is, though, I'm already feeling at the end of my rope and it's only about 11:30 a.m.

Anyway, I'm going to make lamb shank for dinner. I want to make flakey rolls and some barley and vegetables. Actually, I just want to eat these things (well, let's be honest, I'd rather eat mashed potatoes than barley, but I'm trying to be good), but I don't actually want to make them. I'd rather, as mentioned earlier, curl up in bed and sleep.

p.s. Here is a photo from Simon's blessing day back in August. It was during Simon's old man/balding stage. My mom, however, is so photogenic! I was not as photogenic that day, but I've lost about 13 pounds (give or take) since then, so I'd like to think I'd be a bit more photogenic if we had a reshoot today. Well, maybe not today, but you know what I mean. ;)

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

I just had a thought that Simon could be a really good swimmer someday.

Ignoring the fact that he hates baths and tries to keep his legs above the water as being only a temporary state of affairs, here is my reasoning:

1. He just looks like a swimmer. Or at least he did when I thought of it.

2. He is getting really good at the backwards scooch-ing "crawl." He refuses to roll over or crawl properly, instead scooching (scooch is a word, look it up) on his back to get somewhere, usually to the corner of his crib or off the back of the changing table mat. Maybe someday he'll be the best backstroker around.

3. He seemed to want to stay in utero, and they said I had extra amniotic fluid. He even kept most of it in there with/behind him, even after they broke my water.

4. I could handle swimming as a sport. Football, not so much. Basketball, eh. Baseball, please no. But swimming? Sure. He'd have buff arms and legs. But he'd also have to shave his legs, probably. And go to practices super early in the morning (if it's anything like the team my friend in high school was on). Hmm.

Monday, November 15, 2010

We had the ward over for Family Home Evening tonight and I shared a really great story about how traditions are like best practices and shared code repositories at my computer company. They help everyone be more successful and build trust in each other. Not sure if everyone go the metaphor, but it was a fun time for me. :-)

Kari made a really good game where we split into small teams and gave each team member a piece of paper with several boxes for drawing and lines for writing. Each box was labeled with the name of a holiday or season and in the box we would draw a tradition our family had for that period. After drawing them, the pieces of paper got passed around and people had to guess which traditions they had drawn. People came up with some interesting interpretations."yelling at children", "playing drums with black people", and "throwing rocks off a cliff" to name a few!

As for our family, I think some of our traditions have been (or will be) the following:

- Jack-O-Latern Pizza for Halloween

- 12 Days of Christmas instead of 1 Day of Christmas

- Corned Beef and Cabbage for St. Patrick's Day

- For now: Simon gets a monthly birthday desert

- White Christmas the Sunday after Thanksgiving

- We're considering making a tradition of going out for Thanksgiving dinner

- Going to the Temple on our Anniversary

Yeah, it's nice to start some good traditions and we probably have a lot more coming! Hurray for family!

Also, I decided that we need to open up a breakfast cafe' (or possible just a hot cinnamon roll stand) in downtown Springville. Surely it will be huge! If anyone wants to fund this venture, please leave your message.

First of all, it is now freezing in Utah. We spent most of Saturday raking leaves. As I saw a teenager drive by in his car, I had a thought about how teenagers hate doing yard work but are often bribed/given "allowances" to do these things, but how when you own a house, you still hate doing yard work but now you must do it or no one else will. No wonder parents pay their kids to do these things. I am considering paying someone to do it next fall. It's worth it to not have to spend a few hours in the freezing cold raking and bagging up leaves.

Even Simon didn't understand what was going on and was rather reluctant to be cute during this photo shoot:

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Today marked a few important events, most importantly Simon's 4 Month Birthday:

I made some British flapjacks, using golden syrup from England. They did not, however, support candles very well (too hard):

Simon must have known that this dessert was much better than his 2 and 3 month birthday desserts because he was much happier. That, or he was just excited that we got him up from a nap he wasn't too interested in taking.

Other important milestone of the day... our first Jacob's Cove vegetable box!

Friday, November 5, 2010

I got it for Jamund for Christmas last year, read a little bit earlier in the year, and finally finished it (due to an upcoming book club). It was well worth the read, and it made me change my view on food, its production, and our consumption of it.

Jamund had also been hounding me, in a nice way, to not buy any more of the turkey products I have been purchasing (to be "healthy"-- hello, even "Biggest Loser" promotes these products! Ha!), mostly because some (all?) consisted of mechanically separated turkey. Ick. Have you seen those photos going around of mechanically separated meat? It looks like globs of bubble gum.

Well, the book pushed me over the edge (and the fact that Simon will soon be eating proper food, and I don't want him to think gummy fruit snacks or other prepackaged foods are "normal" and what we should eat).

Speaking of fruit snacks, Jamund discovered that a tree we thought was an apricot tree in our backyard actually had 2 (and only 2 that we have seen) apples on it!

That was nice.

Anyway, I don't want to get on a soapbox right now since diet can be a touchy issue for some people, but I just made the decision for our family (since I'm the one who purchases the groceries) that we are going to be more responsible: buying local and, if local isn't possible, hopefully fair trade or organic as is possible and practical.

Our changes so far:

Winder Farms home delivery for dairy and cheeses (and juices as applicable). Apparently their cows live in Payson, just down the road from us. I'm not sure what their living conditions are, to be fair, but it's local and finding a local dairy (that doesn't only provide raw milk) is the pits. If you want to sign up, please let me know: we can both get $15 of free groceries through their referral program!

Eggs: We have a few local options, and Good Earth in Provo has free range eggs from a local source as well.

Breads: I make our own, primarily, but we will start buying Lehi Roller Mills flour from the mill itself, if we can.

And last but not least, the vegetables: CSA through Jacob's Cove in Orem. They deliver to a store in Springville once a week, and we're signed up to get our box of produce! They have some cool (and eco-friendly) technology set up to still get some good produce through the winter. They provide produce for local restaurants such as Pizzeria 712, Communal, and (I think) the Tree Room at Sundance. (p.s. Communal is absolutely lovely, expensive, but lovely. We went there the night before we went into the hospital to have Simon, and I'm sad I didn't get to eat any of the leftovers, not that there were many!)

So, that's what we're up to these days. We'll report back periodically on how it's going!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

This is a pizza that we made on Halloween. The only ingredients found in our garden were the tomatoes on top, AKA the eyes, nose, mouth, and stem. We found it to be a superb treat and have stumbled upon a new Halloween tradition. (For other good Halloween food ideas, click here)

Here is Kari displaying her creation:

So, we didn't do much for Halloween this year. It started on Saturday with trick-or-treaters, and, following last year's tradition (if we remember correctly, we ran out of candy), we provided the kids with their choice of fortune cookies (in addition to other candies). This is surprisingly popular. They didn't know that some of the fortune cookies were over 2 years (?) old... sorry kids.

On Sunday (Halloween), we went to church, came home, watched the Charlie Brown Halloween special, and dressed baby up (or undressed, as the case may be) as baby Harry Potter. We hope you enjoy these pictures: